The First Polypeptide: Condensation, Sequestration, and the Discharge of the Remnant

Abstract

Article 67 proved that the architecture's remnant species accumulates without bound and derived a precise rate condition: any mechanism discharging the remnant must match the production rate or the accumulation is merely slowed, not removed. No such mechanism existed in the inventory. This paper supplies one, from the same chemistry the corpus has used throughout.

The condensation edge n R → poly-R + (n - 1) H₂O converts residues into a polypeptide at the hexameric vertex-spaced site of the abiotic loom, driven by proton-coupled electron transfer, with no new heteroatom feedstock and no reference to the genetic code. The condensation uses functional valence on the zwitterion's ammonium and carboxylate groups, leaving the skeletal valence of the chrysene arms intact. The product partitions to the bilayer because its aromatic side chains — chrysene-derived and therefore hydrophobic, with a transfer free energy of approximately -19 kJ/mol per chain into the bilayer — carry it there by the same rule that keeps every apolar species out of the lumen.

In the bilayer the polymer sequesters the remnant by face-to-face π-π stacking between its chrysene-derived side chains and the apolar remnant arms. The stacking energy for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of this size is 3.8–8.4 kJ/mol per contact, or 1.5–3.4 k_B T at 300 K: stable under thermal conditions, with an equilibrium constant of 5–29.

The rate condition of Article 67 becomes the necessary lower bound f_c ≥ β = α/(1 - α) on the condensation fraction. The condition is strict: because Article 67 proved the accumulation structural rather than kinetic (the ratio ρ = W_b/N is an invariant of the maps), equality at the fixed point is not a coincidence but a requirement. The linear condensation model f_c(W_b) = k · W_b/L_lip carries this forward as the shared target tgt:cond_rate, closed in Article 69.

Condensation acts on two registers simultaneously. It removes residues from the lumen, reducing the particle count and driving the reduced volume toward the division threshold. It sequesters remnants from the bilayer at the same rate, reducing the ceiling-approach rate established in Article 67. Because both increments equal (β - f_c)N per cycle, the ρ-invariance of Article 67 is preserved through the loop transient without modification.

The corpus now has: a vessel, its encoding, its cycle, its osmolyte, its pore, a proof that the lineage persists, and the polymer that clears the waste stream and through it makes the steady state possible. The same tetrasubstituted unit that filters the inlet and anchors the genome now moulds the first polymer.